Bolivia's indigenous people are rising up and reclaiming a new homeland.
An exciting national revolution is unfolding in Bolivia today, with its indigenous peoples at its core. The movement to refound Bolivia is an inspiration to many around the world. Bolivia Rising aims to bring news and analysis about this revolution to english speakers.

Washington promotes Bolivia’s Balkanization

Nidia Diaz, Special for Granma International

The theft of Kosovo, as some political observers have begun to call the secession of this Serbian territory with the support and encouragement of the United States, constitutes, as was expected, a dangerous move by the empire to undermine the territorial integrity of other countries and weaken national unity.

Its objective is to obstruct the viability of processes that provide an alternative to the political model imposed by the North, but it could also be opening, as some experts have warned, a Pandora’s box of unpredictable consequences in a volatile world.

Similar intentions can be noted in the increasingly forceful interventionist activities of Phillip Goldberg, the U.S. ambassador in Bolivia, in support of and to stimulate the separatist stance of the so-called eastern Media Luna governors who, in the specific case of Santa Cruz, have proposed the approval of an autonomous status outside the margin of the law.

These acts of piracy to appropriate the territories of others are not new in the history of U.S. expansionism and conquest. The case of Texas in the 1800’s, a rich and important part of Mexico stolen and converted into a state by the powerful northern neighbor via the massive introduction and later insubordination of U.S. colonists, is a clear example that reminds us of the empire’s voracious appetite.

Throughout their more than 200 years of existence, U.S. governments have encouraged and supported secession and the territorial disintegration of countries that do not share their politics or interests.

Now they are applying the strategy in Kosovo and doing so openly in Bolivia, while they have yet to desist in their efforts in Venezuela and Ecuador, where they are encouraging separatism in regions such as Zulia and Guayaquil.

One does not need to be highly informed on international politics to recognize that the appointment of Phillip Goldberg as U.S. ambassador in Bolivia was in line with Washington’s old, and never abandoned, secessionist policy.

It is no accident that during the days immediately following his appointment, several headlines in the press warned, "From Kosovo to Bolivia", alluding to the consul in question’s participation in the Yugoslav conflict as a diplomat during the 1990’s, during the fall and trial of President Slobodan Milosevic. Goldberg, as head of the U.S. mission in Pristina, capital of Kosovo, was one of the architects of Milosevic’s trial in International Court in The Hague, never recognized by the deposed leader who mysteriously died in his sleep in his cell and whose jailers ruled his death a suicide.

The diplomat’s experience in questions of "decentralization" and "autonomy," was no doubt the best guarantee for sending him to La Paz, where just three months after his arrival he had established links with businessman Branco Marinkovic, of Croatian origin, who not only leads the so-called Civic Committee of Santa Cruz, but was also one of the architects of the racist and elitist movement known as Nación Camba, devoted to the division of Bolivians into whites and Indians, the underlying ideology of which was to identify those who can, and must, lead the country and those who only have the right to obey.

This is the position likewise taken by the governors and oligarchy of the departments of Benin, Pando and Tarija, where "by the way," the country’s largest oil and gas reserves are to be found.

The Nación Camba has as its strong arm the so-called Comando Camba, composed of the Bolivian business elite, large landowners and the fascist youth of the Juventud Cruceña, responsible for the worst attacks on the indigenous population in this department. All of this has been taken into account by those who have enriched themselves in the shadows of the transnational companies, who for more than two years now, since the government of President Evo Morales and the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) came to power, fear the loss of their privileges and have done every thing they can, with the support of the U.S. embassy, to obstruct the revolutionary process and disrupt internal order, so as to make the country ungovernable.

In this fight, the ambassador Goldberg, the Balkanization expert, is playing a leading role, even though he is so enthusiastic about implementing Washington’s orders that he has committed several gaffes, such as the one exposed by U.S. student John Van Schaick, who informed the Bolivian Foreign Office that Vincent Cooper, security advisor to the U.S. diplomatic delegation, had asked him to provide addresses and information about Cuban and Venezuelan citizens working in solidarity with Bolivia.

Likewise, relations have been disclosed between the U.S. embassy in La Paz, the CIA and an irregular group within Bolivian intelligence that is operating outside the margin of the law with U.S. funding.

And these are not the only subversive activities being carried out under the protection of the embassy. Marko Lewis, a U.S. citizen resident in Bolivia, recently denounced the financing by the U.S. Aid for International Development (USAID) of trips for youth linked to the Bolivian right wing, the purpose of which is unknown, but easy to imagine.

With this same budget, the USAID, conspiring with former functionaries of the Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada regime, is funding trips by the governors of the eastern Media Luna to Washington where they are engaging in campaigns against the Evo Morales government and garnering support to prevent the prosecution of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada for his responsibility in the deaths of 68 Bolivians. All of this without counting the millions of dollars handed over to opposition groups through intermediaries.

While Phillip Goldberg is working undercover promoting the Balkanization of Bolivia, President Evo Morales is not only maintaining his position of open dialogue with the separatist governors but is willing to submit his mandate, as well as that of the governors, to a popular recall referendum vote. "Let the people decide who goes and who stays," Evo has said and 2008 will be decisive in this context.

The MAS government will be playing for keeps with this decision if we take into account the powerful mass media that has never relented its campaign against the administration and the million-dollar power of those who will not rest until they see the defeat of a process that seeks to re-found Bolivia and repay the debt owed its people.

Preventing at all costs the implementation of the separatist plans, encouraged and financed by the U.S. embassy and the pro-consul Phillip Goldberg, constitutes today a new front and the greatest challenge facing President Evo Morales, who is convinced that his people’s unity and territorial integrity are the best weapons against the oligarchy and the empire’s sedition.